Well, you bought it when he explained it, which you did very well, thanks Duncan. Well, it was your point to begin with.

I think that what is revealing is that INOG listed a good dozen bands, none of which came into being after 1980. What about Porcupine Tree, Radiohead, Muse, or some of the more mainstream pop bands like Blur, Coldplay or Doves. MFB would know better, I'm sure. Has music stopped since 1978, or was it 1984 as Orwell put forth. After all didn't The Police break up then. If you listen to a lot of American music stations, you may actually believe that, and that is the problem, not the defense. I won't deny that time was a fertile period in Brit popular music. But I would venture to say that the recordings of Porcupine Tree and Radiohead are just as 'inventive' and interesting as anything that came out of that period.

And, we are talking about pulling sounds out of thin air. :)

Which is why, for the most part, I've not listened to any new music on the radio in a very long time.

I still use radio for classic rock ( I still enjoy a dose of poodle haired singers singing about their woohman). But for new stuff, it does nothing for me, and seems rather pointless.

But then again, I love Linkin Park, so perhaps that makes me a huge hypocrite. :-)

Going back a few pages, music is either good or bad.

Trying to label is all is only relative, and to a certain degree, pointless.

I do think you made a real valid point last night, that I've been dwelling on every since.
Yes, we can sit around and complain about the lack of whatever in popular music, and it's fun to blame society, radio or whatever. But in the end, you're right, it's our individual problem, not theirs. We can adapt, or not. The music will go on with us or without us.

Which also brings me to Polly's quote;

Quote:

if we oldies don't play music for other oldies, who will?

That part drives me nuts about being 40 now. So many my age are either stuck in what they know (i.e. the music of their teens/20's) and won't move on. Or they shrug their shoulders and take in what radio gives them because they take the attitude of "I'm old, this is what it in now, I'm just going with it". So many just don't want to see there is a middle ground, or there is a choice to go forward and still discover there new bands and/or different genres that aren't on the radio, and it's possible to not just rehash the past or cave into the garbage on the radio.

Which makes trying to form a new band these days difficult.

EDIT: Radiohead, Muse,Blur, or Doves - Honestly, I wouldn't know what any of those bands sound like. I may have hear them in passing, but I wouldn't be able to idenify them if you played me their stuff. I only know Coldplay because for some odd reason my wife bought their CD (ugh).

That part drives me nuts about being 40 now. So many my age are either stuck in what they know (i.e. the music of their teens/20's) and won't move on. Or they shrug their shoulders and take in what radio gives them because they take the attitude of "I'm old, this is what it in now, I'm just going with it". So many just don't want to see there is a middle ground, or there is a choice to go forward and still discover there new bands and/or different genres that aren't on the radio, and it's possible to not just rehash the past or cave into the garbage on the radio.

For someone aged 40, the kind of styles in which I'm most enamoured either hadn't happened or were happening during toilet training, although having older siblings can pull back one's natural era somewhat.

A lot of this depends on personality. There are certain things that really resonate with me - flow, ghost notes, eclecticism, looseness (musical informality). These things tweezed out in the 80s. So I'm very comfortable today playing in a retro band, both with the vibe and the lower technical standards.

We enjoy it, some of the public enjoy it, so I feel it's a valid artistic decision - "artistic" in a more generic than hifalutin sense. There is a place for rehashing and reinterpreting. It's probably overdone with the old stuff because pop and rock was fresh back then. Until rap turned up, nearly everything that was happening in the pop and rock scenes was just recycled, and any progression was incremental.

I hate to be the one to break it to you. But this music is not experimental or groundbreaking. Many people would classify it as pop. But in any event, I am speaking of five hundred years of musical history, of which whatever happened in that ten year period may or may not be of any consequence in the big picture. I like a lot of those bands. But I am still no going to compare it to Bach or Beethoven, or American composers like Copland and Ives, or Gershwin and Richard Rodgers. I am sorry, I'm just not, and maybe that is part of the problem that MFB speaks about.

There is no way Yes, King Crimson, Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull can be considered pop!!

There is no way Yes, King Crimson, Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull can be considered pop!!

There was a time when I would have said exactly the same thing.

However, about 5-6 years ago I had a liaison with an experimental music buff and former member of a fairly prominent noise group (as far as noise groups can be prominent :) One time I was playing one of Crimson's oblique instrumentals and he described it as "melodic music" in the way someone would say "Spice Girls".

So when ken said "Many people would classify it as pop", the only thing I'd take issue with is "many". IMO "some" would have been more accurate ... unless you're thinking like certain tribes whose numbering system consists of 1 - 2 - 3 - many :)

I read that some members of Henry Cow were dirty about Crimson being lauded as "experimental" and "pioneers of rock improvisational music" when Cow did it before them. Probably Soft Machine too. To them, the "popular" group took all the credit.

BTW, I missed to 90s too but I did enjoy Nivana's, Peal Jam's and Tool's hits, along with a fair bit of stuff on the indie radio station at the time.

Awww Joey, I love lots of old pop. Elton's Candle in the Wind, Fleetwood Mac's Rhiannon, B52s's Love Shack, Bangles's Walk Like an Egyptian, Ben Folds's Brick, Billy Joel's Zanzibar, Crash Test Dummies's Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm, Eurythmics's Here Comes The Rain Again, George Michaels's I Want Your Sex, Joe Jackson's Breaking Us In Two ... dunno if all these are a huge turnoff for you but for me they're great songs with great playing, singing and arranging.

I'm now an old cow and today's pop doesn't do it for me. As far as I'm concerned, pop started going downhill with the machines. There's some good machine music out there, but most sounds like formulaic blah to me.

im just so irritated by pop music latley, ive made an effort to get over my "metal is the best" elitest attitude but the more i listen to it the more i see boring one two one two beats and assinine lyrics. for the most part pop imo has no heart, no soul, and its intelligence is far from being beyong reproach, it just seems to cater to the lowest common denominator. but i should have specified "todays" pop music.

im just so irritated by pop music latley, ive made an effort to get over my "metal is the best" elitest attitude but the more i listen to it the more i see boring one two one two beats and assinine lyrics. for the most part pop imo has no heart, no soul, and its intelligence is far from being beyong reproach, it just seems to cater to the lowest common denominator. but i should have specified "todays" pop music.

I realize the video age of pop music started back in the 80's, and maybe even before then, but I wonder if this affects the musical product today? Are kids paying as much attention to the songs as the videos that go with it? I'm sure there were millions of young guys who weren't paying too much attention to the song Like a Virgin, but were paying a lot of attention to Madonna rolling around in a wedding dress at the MTV Awards. Same goes for the girls in Robert Palmer's video Addicted To Love or Van Halen's Hot For Teacher.

It is interesting the sliding floor of contradictions and myths that creep up into the conversation. If King Crimson is pop, then it goes to demonstrate the original thesis that most pop music is crap because it's not as edgy as Crim, it's not in 9/8, doesn't use any interesting textures or it's not experimental. Prog was popular back in the day because there was an new outlet to highlight it in FM radio. But the growing popularity of punk and the nostalgia for simpler time of girl bands, garage rock and simple ABA songs was fast encroaching. So even back then, there were a lot of people who were not happy with that music. Of course, Am radio was still replete with Billy don't Be a Hero, and Love Will Keep Us together pop ditties that monopolized the mindset of the many, the many now stuck in American idol oblivion waiting for American next big band or dance company.

I remember listening to Carole King's Tapestry a few years back for the first time since it came out and thinking man those ABA forms really get tiring after you hear a few of them. I never tired of hearing a good pop song like those mentioned; but not as nauseum. It is amazing to me however, that so many seem to not be able to go a day without hearing Stairway to Heaven of Bohemian Rhapsody. I think FM radio has done more to stifle its generation than emancipate it.

But now the mass proliferation of music that we have with the internet should leave no one complaining. I've been hearing for ten years now about how in a few years it's all going to break and something is going to happen. That is the first myth. it ain't happening if YOU are not making it happen. What the internet promises is an easier connection to information and the music you love. But it hasn't rid the world of pop oblivion and it won't any time soon. Peeps in power ain't given up that ride any time soon.

There shoud be a lot more resistance going on with what is happening. But hip-hop is premised on resisence and critique as a form of empowerment going back to the Message, as is punk. The best example is Green Day's American Idiot. Now if you don't lke this, you are just too old.

There shoud be a lot more resistance going on with what is happening. But hip-hop is premised on resisence and critique as a form of empowerment going back to the Message, as is punk. The best example is Green Day's American Idiot. Now if you don't lke this, you are just too old.

But outside of the Green Day track, all those songs are from the 80's.

Even though the RATM track is from 2000, it was written in the 80's.

You're more making his point that not. ;-)

Yeah - I was just about to respond the same way. It doesn't even seem like there is much sex, drugs and rock n' roll anymore. Not that all of that back in the 60's and 70's was great. I know there are a lot of Grateful Dead fans, but I don't think they have too much success without the drug part of that. ;)

Yeah - I was just about to respond the same way. It doesn't even seem like there is much sex, drugs and rock n' roll anymore. Not that all of that back in the 60's and 70's was great. I know there are a lot of Grateful Dead fans, but I don't think they have too much success without the drug part of that. ;)

But the 'Sex, Drugs and Rock n' Roll' falls into the same category as the poodle-haired singers for me, as far as cliches go.

But outside of the Green Day track, all those songs are from the 80's.

Even though the RATM track is from 2000, it was written in the 80's.

You're more making his point that not. ;-)

Not really. Any of those bands or artists in them created resistance music throughout the 1990s. Anyway, I really only needed to have one song about resistance to exemplify that it is there today. Fight the Power is a great track. It is a mastery of sampling. I was given him an historical background of my premise that hip-hop was forged on resistance. I could have mentioned Radiohead's 2+2=5. You could have exemplified others instead of criticizing my post or uh, expecting me to do all the work. :)

... people think that is great music ... auto tune the news is not music ... and its proof that if you put a drum machine behind someone talking and auto tune it .. you will get thousands of hits on youtube and sell it on itunes

i don't know know if its like this in all countries or if its just america that the most mindless crap is the most popular.

It's like that in every country. It is cool though, but it's not music.
I'm abit more Afro-cuban, Metal and Rock. But I'm 15 :L

Today's world has the same old gunk as yesteryear, just that the corporations are taking over from the government as our Fat Controllers. Many western governments are now little more than instruments of major corporations.

I think that's why protest songs aren't hits any more - the gatekeepers are now also our owners - and they are touchy:

A 37-year-old English bank worker has been fired after she compared her $11-an-hour wage to her CEO's $6250-an-hour salary on Facebook.

Essex woman Stephanie Bon was working as an HR assistant for Lloyds Banking Group when she saw her new chief executive's $21m salary announced on the news.

She then went on Facebook and posted: "LBG's new CEO gets £4000 an hour. I get £7. That's fair."

Miss Bon was fired from her job the next day after being told she had put the company down.

"My team leader asked me why I was writing things like that," Miss Bon said. Then my manager came in and said she was disappointed in me. She said I was putting the company down. But I did not write anything that was controversial."

Lloyds has denied Miss Bon's firing had anything to do with Facebook.

A spokesman for the bank said she was employed on a short-term contract and the work she had been employed to do had finished and so she was given her notice.

Miss Bon remains defiant, saying she has been treated "appallingly" for what "essentially amounts to a chat with mates outside work".

The salary of new Lloyds boss Antonio Horta-Osorio was revealed last week. The Portuguese banker will receive as much as $21m in salary, bonuses and other benefits this year.

I don't think too many would have predicted that the function of Orwell's thought police would have been privatised!

AMEN sister. I company in America tried to fire an employee that complained about her manager on FB. It went to court and they found that she could not be fired for what is protected as free speech. Long Live the First Amendment.

Here in the states they are talking about cutting the measily little 160 million we get for the arts while major corporations like GE, Chevron, Microsft pay absolutely nothing in taxes while getting multi-billion dollar subsidies and tax rebates from the working class. The US taxpayers pend billions in farm subsidies and other government funded programs that they receive no remuneration for. It is 1984 in corporate guise.

Not really. Any of those bands or artists in them created resistance music throughout the 1990s. Anyway, I really only needed to have one song about resistance to exemplify that it is there today. Fight the Power is a great track. It is a mastery of sampling. I was given him an historical background of my premise that hip-hop was forged on resistance. I could have mentioned Radiohead's 2+2=5. You could have exemplified others instead of criticizing my post or uh, expecting me to do all the work. :)

But what fun would that be? :-)

(and I've already said I wouldn't know a Radiohead song if it bit me.)

OK, for more recent protest/resistance songs in a pop vein, you have to look at Linkin Park's 2007 album "Minutes to Midnight"

When it came out, I was very struck how much it hearkened back to the protest songs of the 60's, particularly the tracks "No More Sorrow" "Hands Held High" and the rather epic "The Little Things Give You Away"

Their more recent album touches upon the protest theme too, but in a different way, and less 60's about it, with more focus on apocalyptic themes.

In buisness the corporate world is a filthy beast. I played that game for awhile, I resigned two years ago, recently started drumming... never new life could be so good. Funny to me is that sooo many people think I'm a looser now because I left the big paying job and fancy title.

Once your in that game its hard to leave... I'm thankful my wife, still in said company, is so supportive... but I knew she would be because I chose wisley my son...

Its sad that we, in North America as a whole, care more about how we are perceived then what we stand for. I mean, what will I do if I'm not seen in the coolest of places wearing the latest trend keeping my mind busy with toys and gagets, lol.

Yep Ken, and the kind of pop that everyone here knows is crap is just the sound of cash registers.

I really, really hope that the internet dilutes big biz's power as people often suggest, but I don't think it's as profound as they make out. On the other hand, imagine how closed western popular culture would be without it!

I have mixed feelings about government funding for the arts. Seems to me that only those who play the game are deemed worthy because governments are so risk averse. Maybe independent collectives are a better answer?

Hey Zeus, how does your wife feel about still being in the machine while you escape?

Quote:

Originally Posted by DrumEatDrum

To further the protest-resistence themes in modern pop-rock, I think you have to get out of mainstream.

That's the issue. For the most part, that means they'll be preaching to the converted rather than throwing the spotlight on issues the general public might have missed while they've been busy with kids, mortgages and working for The Man.

Yep Ken, and the kind of pop that everyone here knows is crap is just the sound of cash registers.

I really, really hope that the internet dilutes big biz's power as people often suggest, but I don't think it's as profound as they make out. On the other hand, imagine how closed western popular culture would be without it!

I have mixed feelings about government funding for the arts. Seems to me that only those who play the game are deemed worthy because governments are so risk averse. Maybe independent collectives are a better answer?

Public funding for the arts is a no brainer. All those opera houses, symphonies orchestras and art museums create revenue for the city by bringing in tourism. When I was young, they used to have jazz concerts for free in the museums and I saw legends like the Heath Brothers, Joe Henderson and Billy Higgins there. The whole NY avant-garde that gave birth to Cage, LaMonte Young, Steve Reich The Velvets, minimalism, Punk, was due to the public funding of artists. You see, it's not only giving money to Symphonies, it's also supporting public festivals, community concerts, experimental music and theater, education of the arts for the young, and for the old timers. It's about the development of culture. And yes we can say that the arts are not profitable. But if anything the huge subsidies of wheat, corn and soybeans in America along with the huge bailouts and subsidies would seem to prove that the arts are not the only business that is not profitable.

I did like that line, "I don't think too many would have predicted that the function of Orwell's thought police would have been privatized!" This is the thing that many here in America don't get. Governmental tyranny is bad; but it is not any better if it is Big Business that rules with an iron fist. Now they are talking about off shore drilling, as if BP's fiasco never happened, new-cular (in Bush's vernacular) still nowhere to put the waste, and drilling for oil in the forests or Canada and the national parks of America. They want to privatize the parks and privatize the oceans by quarantining off fish farms and selling off the grids. This is why those in power have tried to bankrupt the federal government. The internet is supposed to be a place where there is free reign of thought. But now search engines direct you to sponsored websites, and they are controlling the type of information that people access. Today I got this in my youtube recommended listening list.

How Justin Gets a Girl's Attention!
Popstar! asks Justin Bieber to reveal the silliest thing he's ever done to get a g...
SUGGESTED Because you watched Rush - RED BARCHETTA...

...perhaps that whole rebelliousness is part of the musical marketing (being cynical here), sometimes business does not really care as long as it sells, but I guess there are those that chose what you ("should") listen to.

Atleast we do have some degree of freedom of speech in the western world, but I do think that there are some elements of our governments and corporations that threaten that freedom.

That's the issue. For the most part, that means they'll be preaching to the converted rather than throwing the spotlight on issues the general public might have missed while they've been busy with kids, mortgages and working for The Man.

I love the 'Wish You Were Here' album so much. And not even for the title song or 'Crazy Diamond'. The other two are something else and they remind me of 'Animals', which is probably my favourite of their albums.

I love the 'Wish You Were Here' album so much. And not even for the title song or 'Crazy Diamond'. The other two are something else and they remind me of 'Animals', which is probably my favourite of their albums.

I'll have to check it out - I missed that album. I'm a Floyd-head from way back, including some of their abstract early songs - I'm totally in love with the Pompeii DVD.

In regards to the Wifey's feelings about her in the corporate world and me getting out...

She is Indonesian, schooled in Switzerland, attented College in Miami, and then we met in CA. I share this because it was important for me to find someone woth a Global understanding of what is truly important in life...

She loves what she does and its a huge accomplishment for a Woman, much less an Asian woman, to succeed in the Boys club company I'm talking about. Whats better is she could care less if you drive a BMW or a Bucket of bolts, have a "real" Coach bag or not... The beauty of life comes from within not what we put on, lol.

I'm was the superficial one... and I'm thankful she fixed most of me. :)

That echos my feelings about that album precisely. Desolate. In a good way.

Is that a play on words Larry? I remember several years back, I was visiting my sister in London. We were bowling and my brother in law wanted to play the juke box. He sees this album Meddle and says, Ken you like Pink Floyd, should I play it? I said don't play the track Echos, it's twenty minutes long. Now being a fan of 1980s synth pop, he actually didn't believe that a song could be 20 minutes long, so he played it. There we were in the bowling alley listening to Echos. He couldn't believe that it actually was twenty minutes long; but certainly agreed it was a quarter (or a pound) well spent.

I love Animals because like Meddle, it is one great album not destroyed by AOR.

Is that a play on words Larry? I remember several years back, I was visiting my sister in London. We were bowling and my brother in law wanted to play the juke box. He sees this album Meddle and says, Ken you like Pink Floyd, should I play it? I said don't play the track Echos, it's twenty minutes long. Now being a fan of 1980s synth pop, he actually didn't believe that a song could be 20 minutes long, so he played it. There we were in the bowling alley listening to Echos. He couldn't believe that it actually was twenty minutes long; but certainly agreed it was a quarter (or a crown) well spent.

I love Animals because like Meddle, it is one great album not destroyed by AOR.

It discusses how during the Wall, Pink Floyd had a hit album, with sold out concerts, but was not being played on the radio because a record company exec wanted to see what would happen if he didn't bribe radio stations for a change.

It discusses how during the Wall, Pink Floyd had a hit album, with sold out concerts, but was not being played on the radio because a record company exec wanted to see what would happen if he didn't bribe radio stations for a change.

It got a lot of air play where I am, and that was before the shows. For The Wall, Pink Floyd did three cities, LA, London and believe it of not Long Island. They played a week of sold out shows that were celebrity and Kennedy attended. I didn't go because I disliked that album. At that point, everyone was jumping on the disco band wagon, and to hear one of my favorite bands doing a disco tune was more than I could bare. But by the time the movie came out, I better understood the satire and the Orwellian references. Years later my uncle says to me, "Oh, I worked security for that show. I could have gotten you in." I should have hit him." That was the last chance to see Pink Floyd with all its members.

Well Ken, at least they were new when you were the right age. I feel slightly embarrassed admitting that I like them because they're so often retrospectively grouped in with bands that I really do not like at all. People then decide to make assumptions about my musical taste - but this is all retrospective. I don't like a lot of music from the 70's - and I like their 60's stuff and 'The Final Cut', so it's not exclusively 70's - but I really do like Pink Floyd. My Dad is a big fan and used to always play them in the car when I was very small. Somewhere he has the cassettes that he used to play. Lots of memories there from being really very, very small.